Do Your Homework!

Editor’s note: Jonathan Haber is a Courserian who is taking classes on Coursera to experiment with a project of his called “Degree of Freedom”. He is guest blogging on our site throughout this next year to keep us up-to-date on his progress and offer useful study tips!

As I close in on the end of the sophomore year at my Degree of Freedom One Year BA project, one of the things that stands out is the important role course components such as reading, quizzes, peer-graded essays and other assignments have played in the overall Coursera learning experience.

Homework, tests and other sorts of assignments fulfill a critical function in all modes of learning. But in MOOC classes, they provide one of the most important ways for students to interact with the material to reinforce our learning while also demonstrating what we know.

This short video provides some suggestions for how to get the most out of these components of a MOOC class:

Those interested in reading more about testing can begin here, and those who want to dig a bit deeper into peer-graded assignments can start here.
And speaking of homework, it’s time to start grading the creative projects that were assigned to my Coursera class on Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity (which reminds me of another important component of things like peer-graded assignments: that they let you contribute to the class by playing the role of teacher as well as student).